Green Day
21st Century Breakdown
Reprise/Warner Music 8/10
Every eye (and ear) in the rock world is on Green Day right now. It’s been five years since the trio completely reinvented themselves with the ‘punk-rock opera’ American Idiot. Can they live up to such a monumental achievement both from a creative and commercial standpoint? The time has come for them to answer that question with the release of 21st Century Breakdown.
Some might think it ludicrous to attempt to make this follow-up bigger and more epic than American Idiot, but as Green Day learned over a decade ago with the slump that followed the 1994 breakout
success of Dookie, it’s much better for this band to overdo things than to under do them. To this end, they’ve made 21st Century Breakdown another ‘concept’ album, with a narrative even more wide-ranging than the last.
With 18 tracks on offer, this is definitely not pandering to the Twitter generation. Divided into three separate acts – Act I - Heroes and Cons, Act II - Charlatans and Saints, and Act III - Horseshoes and Hand grenades – the album wanders through the fractured world of two young lovers, Gloria and Christian. To compliment this more openended concept, the music shows a greater level of ambition, with a dazzling array of styles on display and suitably epic production courtesy of Butch Vig.
With little need to come out screaming for attention, 21st Century Breakdown gets off to a somewhat lackluster start. Typified by big, triumphant open guitar chords and steady tempos, the first handful of tracks, including first single “Know Your Enemy”, are content to play their role in the build-up.
It isn’t until you get to track 5, “Before The Lobotomy” that things start to really hot up. After one of Billie Joe Armstrong’s sentimental piano ballad intros (of which there are quite a few on this album), the song breaks out into a lively punk number, leading into the hard and fast “Christian’s Inferno”. From here on, you are immersed in Gloria and Christian’s world, experiencing genuine highs like “East Jesus Nowhere” and “21 Guns”, along with lows like the plodding “Last Of The American Girls”.
It’s less focused than American Idiot, and it lacks the same quality of hit singles, but lord knows how Green Day are going to top this in five years time.
MFR
